Introduction

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Talk Overview

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  • Introduction to Iron Age Settlements Dynamics
    • The South Levant in the Iron Age
  • Data and Methods
    • Project Introduction
    • Archaeological Data and their problems
  • Results and Discussion
    • Archaeodemographic Curves
    • Centralization vs Fragmentation
    • Spatial Distribution
  • Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Iron Age Settlement Dynamics

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  • The Great Dispersal
  • Landscape Infilling
  • Tells vs Flat sites
  • Long-term trends
  • Different dynamics to the West?
  • Overall trend towards centralization
  • What happens in South Levant?

South Levant in the Iron Age II

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  • After formative period, independent kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Aram-Damascus
  • Phoenician City-states
After Palmisano et al. (2019); Sharon (2013); Mazar (2011)
Arch. Periodization Dating (BC)
Iron Age I 1150-980
Iron Age IIa 980-830
Iron Age IIb 830-720
Iron Age IIc 720-539
Iron Age III 539-333

After Liverani (2003)

South Levant in the Iron Age II

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  • After formative period, indipendent kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Aram-Damascus

  • Phoenician City-states

  • Assyrian conquest in 720 BC

  • Provinces and Client States

After Palmisano et al. (2019); Sharon (2013); Mazar (2011)
Arch. Periodization Dating (BC)
Iron Age I 1150-980
Iron Age IIa 980-830
Iron Age IIb 830-720
Iron Age IIc 720-539
Iron Age III 539-333

Current interpretations of Settlement Dynamics

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Current interpretations of Settlement Dynamics

Research Questions

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  • How is demography impacted by the Assyrian invasion and subsequent administration?
  • How are settlement systems impacted by imperial practices and long-term settlement dynamics?

Data and Methods

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The Project

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The Project - Aims

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  • Analyze population and settlement patterns in South Levant to investigate Assyrian imperial strategies
  • Samaria and Judah (often contrasted as examples of the Assyrian empire’s destructive role)
  • Holistic approach that integrates archaeological, textual, and geographic data into a spatial framework
  • Long-term analysis: Chalcolithic (4500 B.C.) - Byzantine (638 A.D.)

Archaeological Data

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Archaeological Data

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  • 5542 Total Sites (From Chalcolithic to Byzantine)
  • 14142 Site Phases
  • From
    • Samaria Survey - 516
    • Massasseh Hill Survey - 1365
    • Archaeological Survey of Israel - 2830
    • West Bank Database - 812
    • Excavation Reports + Others - 19

Archaeological Data - Pitfalls

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  • Chronological precision
    • Subdivisions for Iron Age not always available
    • Event-based dating
    • Ideological interpretations

Archaeological Data - Pitfalls

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  • Chronological mismatch between older and newer surveys
  • Overlapping surveys and datasets, or missing areas
  • Size not always available either for all periods or for specific periods
  • Different nature of databases

Radiocarbon Data

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Processing

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  • Geospatial database in QGIS, R scripts
  • Chronological harmonization (see also Greenberg and Keinan 2009) and selection of evidence of ancient occupation (settlements) only

Processing

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  • Long-term fluctuation of population estimates, Summed Probability Distribution of radiocarbon dates
  • Aoristic Approaches and Randomization for archaeological data (Palmisano et al. 2017, 2019)

Example of Aoristic sum (Palmisano 2023)

Processing

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Types of Rank-Size curves (Crema 2013)

Open Science

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  • Adhere to the principles of open science
  • Organization on GitHub
  • Public project wiki
  • Tips to solve common issues when reusing the dataset
  • Methodology and convetions

Open Science

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Results

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Radiocarbon Summed Probability Distribution (SPD)

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  • Long term analysis of radiocarbon dates show demographic fluctuations (estimates)
  • Comparison with exponential model: statistically significant increase in the transition between LB/IA I (1300-1150 BC) and IA I/IIa (1150-830 BC)
  • Gradual decline but artificial drop for later periods

Radiocarbon Summed Probability Distribution (SPD)

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  • Permutation Plot of radiocarbon dates
  • Systematic and quantitative method to compare regional divergences in demographic fluctuations (Crema et al. 2016)
  • No significant differences in Iron Age
  • Curves follow more or less the same pattern
  • Minor differences in the LBA

Rank-size - Samaria and Judah

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Regional trends highlight differences between Samaria and Judah

Rank-size - Samaria

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  • No strong centralization in IA IIa (980-830 BC)
  • Process towards a pronounced centralization already in IA IIb (830-720 BC)
  • Birth and rise of Samaria as capital (IA IIa/b) and then provincial centre (IA IIb/c)
  • Less sites in IA IIc (720-539 BC) but more primate curve
  • Probably a result of Assyrian administration
  • This pattern lingers until Iron Age III (539-333 BC)

Rank-size - Judah

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  • No strong centralization in IA IIa (980-830)
  • Zipfian-like distributioun in Iron Age IIb (830-720 BC) (“formative” stages of Jerusalem)
  • Centralization clearly evident in Iron Age IIc (720-539 BC)
  • Less sites in general for IA subphases

Reoccupations and Settlement Continuity

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  • Reoccupation trends are not as informative
  • The strong continuity might just be a void in the documentation for Iron Age IIc

Samaria

Judah

Reoccupations - Spatial Distribution

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  • Spatial distribution of IA IIa-b sites
    • Strong continuation of occupation in the north, new foundation in southern samaria and southern judah

NB: Only sites surely dated to each IA subperiod are shown on the map

Reoccupations - Spatial Distribution

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  • Spatial Distribution of “abandoned” IA IIc (720-539 BC) sites might indicate limitations of sites chronological attribution
  • Or, chronological period including fall of Neo-Assyrian empire
  • General tendency of assigning IA II pottery to early phases
  • Abandonment almost exactly correspond to specific surveys

NB: Only sites surely dated to each IA subperiod are shown on the map

Reoccupations - Spatial Distribution

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  • A different picture if we take into consideration all general IA II sites
  • Issues with Judah and Iron Age IIc

NB: Only sites surely dated to each IA subperiod are shown on the map

Multi-proxy approaches

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  • Archaeodemographic Proxies highlight similar patterns regarding population
  • Small differences in the timing of the pop. increase (slightly earlier and more significant in Samaria)

Multi-proxy approaches

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  • Samaria: major peaks, higher growth from ca. (3200 BP)
    • Larger sites in general
  • Judah: gradual growth up to the IBA and minor fluctuations in MBA II-III
    • Larger growth in Iron Age appears slightly later than in Samaria (3100 BP)

Multi-scalar approaches - Samaria and Jerusalem

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  • Smaller settlements filling up spaces between IA I medium-sized sites
  • Samaria rising as the major center in the area

Samaria - IA I

Samaria - IA II

Multi-scalar approaches - Samaria and Jerusalem

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  • Modern city prevented evaluation of immediate surroundings of ancient town
  • Structure of small and medium-sized settlements

Jerusalem - IA I

Jerusalem - IA II

Discussion - Iron Age II in context

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After Squitieri (2024)

Discussion

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  • Trends that appears to be confirmed by archaeo-demographic proxies

Archaeodemographic proxies for Southern Levant (Palmisano et al. 2021)

Discussion

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  • Very similar demographic curves and fluctuations for Samaria and Judah
    • If deep settlement system difference, the two curves would have been divergent, or profoundly different
    • Settlement system restructuring/ruralization (Samaria) and later centralization (Judah) evident from the rank-size curves

Discussion

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Samaria

Judah

Conclusions

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Conclusions

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  • Generally, an IA-like trend of settlement dispersal and centralization is visible in both regions
  • However, regional differences
    • Samaria seems to attain a primate curve (centralization) earlier (IA IIb) than Judah (IA IIc)
    • Possibly an effect of the integration inside the assyirian provincial administration
  • Demographic trends do not show significant differences between the two regions
    • The concept of two separate trajectories based on destruction and flourish cannot be supported
  • Chronological issues prevents (for now) a deeper evaluation of IA IIc, especially from a spatial standpoint

Future perspectives

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  • Systematic integration of historical sources (ARMEP - Novotny and Radner 2018)
  • Publication of the dataset and analyses in the respective online repositories
  • Data paper and dataset submitted to JOAD


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